I was criticised earlier this week for always watching films with a writer’s eye. The implication was that only non-writers can see movies correctly, and the inference I took away was that there are people who will sit through any old shit.

It is true that I get very bored, very quickly when all a film has is good-looking visuals. It’s also true that I have watched movies because of who wrote them where I have never once chosen a film because of its director or for that matter, actors. I need to be interested in the story and that is enough to get me through the cinema door, that is the only thing that gets me there. I can then be disappointed, of course, and there have also been times when I’ve seen a given film only because the one I wanted was full, so I’ve gone in knowing nothing.

Actually, there’s also Arrival. I didn’t know anything beyond the title when I saw that, but in this case I wasn’t going to see a film, I was going to have a nice afternoon out with a friend. Still, Arrival has become very important to me so clearly my decision-making process over what films to watch is flawed.

But even so, if you tell me the writing isn’t important, you’re telling me the film is crap. It might look fantastic, but then everything does. It might feature wonderful direction, but shit is shit no matter how well-wrapped it is.

And I just can’t do it. I can’t sit there watching only glorious cinematography when my mind keeps wandering back to my To Do list.

Which is why I’m torn over whether to bother seeing The Odyssey. It’s why I’m not at all torn over the forthcoming “The Piano Tuner” and “Coyote vs Acme”, because they’ve both hooked me from their trailers. It’s why I deeply enjoyed “The Invite”.

All of which is a long-winded way to say each to their own. But telling me that because I’m a writer, I am incapable of knowing whether I’ve enjoyed a film or not, that is some intense bollocks there.

Okay, I just wanted to say “Clear and presenter danger.” Let’s you and I see if there’s any chance I’ve got something to back that up.

I think I have. Earlier this week, a friend did me the favour of alerting me to how a show called “The Piano” was about to start on Channel 4. She didn’t then do me the favour of admitting that she soon gave up on it.

I’m not going to say that I only watched because of her, because she might hear me. Instead, I’ll tell you I watched because of her, and because it was about pianos, and because this episode was filmed entirely at Birmingham New Street Station. It was great to see the place shot so well, excellent to see it shown off.

But you remember Strictly Come Dancing and the way that its minute-by-minute format was duplicated by Dancing on Ice. (It may have been the other way around. Certainly one copied the other.) Then when that format wouldn’t quite do for the Great British Bake Off, they contrived a version which then went on to power the Sewing Bee, the Pottery Thingy, and possibly others.

All of these have been distilled into The Piano and the sense of sticking rigidly to a format is equalled only by how that format has one single overriding and mandatory requirement. Sod the piano players, sod the piano playing, we must never go beyond 20 seconds without hearing from the presenters or seeing them going wide-eyed at a) how great the pianists are or, it doesn’t matter which, 2) how bad they are.

This is factual television today. It’s never about the subject anymore, it is just about not letting us see the subject and always seeing the presenters.

I don’t know when this changed, when it stopped being that factual was about the subject. I suspect there’s a bit of desperation here, too, as these shows daren’t risk any possibility of viewers switching to something else.

Which makes me wonder if this all happened when television fractured off from three or five channels into myriad ones. It is cheaper now to start a new TV channel than it is to make a TV show.

Then of course there’s the internet and complaints that YouTube is training people into having no attention span. I thought that was true until I watched this show. Now I’m wondering.

There are stunningly awful YouTube channels but there are also excellent ones that figure if you’re not interested in the topic, you won’t watch — but someone who is will stick with it to the end and then probably subscribe.

Everything is cyclical and I know there must be factual shows that are not frantic to keep hold of us. But I’m arguably one of the target markets for The Piano — I’ve just started learning to play — and with the presenter-obsession and the artifice of its competition, I’m gone.

So it’s been on my mind to tell you that when Nigel Farage made his faux resignation speech this week, I was in the House of Commons. I had it in my head to quote you a line from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” by Mary Kay Place, where Mary insists that “I’ve been around… well, alright, I might not have been around, but I’ve been nearby.”

Only, I like that line and I don’t like talking about Farage. Plus while I did actually think he was in the same building making that speech, he was in fact half a mile away, which is a start, but not really far enough.

And then it’s also been on my mind to talk to you about someone who sent me an unsolicited article this week and said in the original email that I should know that it was not being considered anywhere else. But they’d sent it simultaneously to 20 publications.

When I pointed this out, they got a bit snotty and you could feel them trying to be patient with me. It is not being considered anywhere else, they reminded me, and they are so sorry if you’ve misunderstood reality, William.

They also clearly thought they had made some progress here because they asked me various questions and I might even have answered them, if they hadn’t used that if-sorry approach. I’m sorry if they don’t grasp that I have a delete key.

But all of this is a bit miserable and it’s a sunny day, I’m deep into writing a book I’ve been trying to sell for years, I’m finding out things for it that are so tiny that you cannot believe how happy they’re making me. Tomorrow I’ve got a day off and I’m going to a friend’s book launch. Tonight I am strongly considering curry. Next week my wife comes home from her holiday with her sister. So much is great, there is so much to look forward to and to enjoy.

Although what this heatwave does to chocolate is unforgivable.

So apparently there’s this new film, right, called “Young Washington”, and at the end of it, Kelsey Grammer talks directly to the audience. It’s not as if the film is breaking the fourth wall with a character suddenly turning to us, it’s more a separate advert that will presumably be ditched when this thing finally goes to streaming. But it’s Kelsey Grammer, he’s talking to the audience, and he’s asking them to buy more tickets to this film, whether or not they then go see it again.

“With your help, ‘Young Washington’ can be America’s #1 movie on the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth,” he says, according to Slate magazine. He continues: “we can send a message loud and clear that America and the principles that helped shape her are still worth fighting for.”

There’s irony for you.

Follow. There’s a wonderful, I mean seriously wonderful episode of Grammer’s most famous sitcom, “Frasier”, called “The Candidate”. In it, psychiatrist Frasier rehearses filming a TV promo for a local politician, then not to spoil this, learns something that suggests this man might be mentally unfit for the job. Frasier now has to record the promo and every line that had seemed positive in rehearsal is now laden with extra meaning. Same speech, totally different meaning overall, it is a truly, enviably fine piece of writing by Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano.

I don’t think Grammer appreciates this, or would appreciate having it pointed out, but every word in that “Young Washington” speech of his is fine, yet its meaning is totally changed because of Grammer himself and the fact that he is a full-on Donald Trump fan. Kelsey Grammer is MAGA, even now, even after everything, and even as the US celebrates 245 years plus 5 under Trump.

Calm, William, calm. I started this today intending to write to you about this ancient business of whether you can like someone’s work if they themselves are problematic. I was going to tell you that someone once said my writing was worthy of Patricia Highsmith and, wow, did I feel great until I Googled her and read about her politics.

Actually, in the middle of the night I thought of a gag to do with this. I thought of how it’s a shame I wasn’t told this today, when Google is so poor that a search on Highsmith would only return sites to buy her books. I could’ve enjoyed the praise so much more.

Then of course there’s that Woody Allen line about “I just can’t listen to that much Wagner, I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.” And then there’s that Woody Allen. There was a long time when his “Hannah and Her Sisters” was my favourite film and maybe that naturally faded away over time, but recently I was in a conversation about it so I started to watch it again. Immediately, just immediately the music on the soundtrack, it’s so glorious and evocative, it slapped me back to when I first saw it, I was back relishing Allen’s and my memories of New York City.

I realised, though, that there was now so much going on in my head about this film that I wasn’t watching the film. I stopped it, thinking that it used to be that my only criticism was how Michael Caine isn’t great in this. Now I also question the journey I remember one woman’s character has where she eventually comes to see Allen’s character is right, that’s bothering me.

Just now, writing to you, I figured I’d compromise and listen to that brilliant soundtrack. I have it on vinyl somewhere but there’s only a tribute act version on Apple Music and checking Amazon, I learn that the CD is selling for £200 and up. The landscape film poster I used to have on my wall as a student is now available, with some digging, for £150.

I think I’d still rather pay that than go see “Young Washington” and spend the whole film dreading Grammer’s speech.

Grammar is fascinating, though, and yes, I’m trying to get my mind back onto the point. That point to me is about the wall between a person and their work, but it’s also specifically the way that he speaks of fighting for America’s principles when his avowed hero is fighting against them. You know this, it’s very definitely a right-wing thing where you must shout as loudly as you can in favour of the thing you are actually destroying.

I’m never going to see “Young Washington”, I’m safe. It doesn’t appeal and the one review I’ve seen says it’s pants, but even though it’s only a tiny chance that streamers will forget to remove that Grammer ad at the end, it doesn’t seem worth the risk.

Maybe I should go write more Highsmith-like prose. While, this is certainly true, that “Hannah and Her Sisters” soundtrack is playing for free in my head. God, it’s good.

I’ve had a good week — I signed a book contract — but there was one part of one conversation that was miserable and I keep thinking about it. A writer nearing the end of her university course asked me about joining the Writers’ Guild and at one point said that emerging writers who do not use AI are at a disadvantage, I think even that they are left behind.

Now, that reads as if she were arguing in favour of AI and she was not at all. She was asking about it because this is how the industry looks to her at the moment, how it’s being presented to her.

But what this looks to me is that she’s been listening to an AI evangelist. There are still a lot of these, and that’s not even including people who sell AI. There are so many people who have invested so much of themselves in this bullshit that they have to say it’s the way things are and that you’d better join in because otherwise you’re never going to get any work as a (insert job title here). It helps if these people are not writers because any time you can devalue something that you can’t do, there are people who like that.

I think you noticed that I slipped in a certain word there. You were reading quickly, so to save you skipping back up, I mean the word beginning with B and ending with “ullshit”.

I do use AI tools and actually more and more: I’ve used AI for transcribing every interview I’ve done in the past ten years. I’ve an AI shortcut that takes a list and converts it into the right HTML for that list to be seen on a website. The other day, the new Siri AI was able to tell me some names of sources of mine that I’d somehow blanked on.

The list goes on but the list will never include having AI write for me or, an example this writer said, product pitch deck visuals.

I could now trot out half a day’s worth of reasons but if you don’t happen to already have exactly the same opinions about it as me, you have at least heard all of this before.

So let me focus on that specific thing of new writers being left behind. Forgive me, this is quite a technical point: if you get AI to do your writing for you, why the fuck should I use you? Commission you? Publish you?

I mean it. There is nothing you can do with AI that cannot be done by absolutely every single person else on the planet. So you are demonstrating to me that you are entirely worthless.

There is this thing in writing that if you’re not a writer can sound very arty and detached from reality. It’s that you should write what you want. As in what you personally are interested in, not what the market demands. It is arty, but rather than being detached from reality, it is stone-cold pragmatism.

Like I said to this writer — who I really liked, by the way, I should say that — today the market is hot for gay sports stories. Great. But by the time you’ve written yours, the world will be onto something else. No one could seen what an impact Rachel Reid’s Game Changers tale Heated Rivalry would have, and today no one can see what the next thing that will have that excellent wallop will be.

Writing what you want to write is not arty or being up yourself, it is entirely pragmatic because you cannot predict the market, you can only write the best thing you can and see what happens when it’s done.

Don’t use AI for writing — well, do if you like but how is that writing? — and never try to write what readers and audiences like today.

Unless it’s zombies. For some reason zombie stories just will not die.

I did not know until one minute ago that this line was written by Ian Fleming, and I did not remember until one minute ago that it begins with the word “happenstance”. It’s a fine word. But the line is that “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

You know the line, even if you only half-remember it like me and just imagine writing a line that gets even half-remembered. I adore that I half-remembered it, went to check, and learnt all this. I cannot get enough of finding out anything, whether it’s because I want to say it to you, or just because.

But speaking of because.

The reason I half-remembered this is that something has now happened twice. Or near enough. This week someone asked me how old I was and did so specifically because they were surprised I was interested and enthusiastic about something. Not long ago, someone else of around my age — I’m 60 — was equally and vocally surprised that I wasn’t, as he put it, just circling the drain.

If I’m supposed to be glum and fixated and uninterested, but I’m not, then I think there has to be part of me that just wants to preen at you. Only, it’s also frightening. Just because it isn’t true now, maybe tomorrow I’ll be like that. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be all about how things were better in my day. I thought this was my day.

It’s frightening because being closed to anything and everything is such a ferocious waste. I grant you that we’re not living in the greatest of worlds at the moment, but there is still so much that is fantastic. Everyone is so interesting. Everything is so interesting, absolutely everything.

Except football.

But then while I do mean that, I am also conscious that the football part is a joke I’ve said a lot. It’s my line and I do have a few of those. Such as how if you and I even pass in the street for long enough, you will have heard me say that I do not expect to be remembered when I’ve left a room. But I don’t. Even I am a bit bored of my saying that I’d rather talk about you than me, I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it, but the thing is that yes, I would infinitely rather talk about you.

Says William as he rabbits on about himself yet again.

There is so much to learn, to relish, to just be really happy finding out, I don’t understand how anyone can think anything else. I am afraid of thinking it.

Mind you, now I’m afraid that I’m sounding like an arse. Look at me, I’m so wonderfully excited about everything, even as I myself actually do bugger-all. It would be so good to have a sentence now that began with but.

Yet, okay, let me give you an example of what excites me and you can see that it is preposterous, you can see that it’s not worth anything more than an uh-huh. I”m researching a TV show called “Lou Grant”, which is the show that made me want to be a writer so this is a very big deal for me, and as it happens, every episode had a one-word title. It’s like the way “Friends” named every episode as “The One With” or “Where” or whatever, it was a thing, and in the case of “Lou Grant”, no one ever mentioned it and certainly didn’t explain it.

I now know why the show did it.

It was a drama set around a newspaper and the one-word episode titles were a homage to what journalists refer to as a slug. To this day I write slugs constantly: it’s the one or maybe a few words that log the article you’re writing. So that you and your editor can say yes, yes, the crash story is in progress, or I’m waiting for a call back on the wolf article.

That’s it. That’s all. I do not think this has changed your day. Yet when I found out, when a producer on the show told me, I danced.

Don’t tell me we ever have to stop dancing.

Last Saturday, I had to wait 90 minutes at my barber’s. Obviously I’m not complaining, in fact it was good to see a local business being busy and especially so when I’ve often been there at times where my greying hair on the floor would be indistinguishable from tundra blowing by.

But this time I was in a hurry and there wasn’t anything I could do, so I had to sit there for that hour and a half. True, I worked on various things to do with a book I’m producing, and I read a bit of a novel, read a short script, played a game of sudoko, did my Duolingo Chess for the day and — I am quite pleased with this — also did a silent piano exercise.

Yet otherwise, nothing. Just sitting there. It wasn’t exactly peaceful, but it was still and I realise I’m not used to that. At the very least, if there are people around then I am talking to them. It’s exciting. New people. This time, I don’t know why, no. People came and went, there were probably six men at various stages, and they did all talk.

One guy made a new friend and got into a very detailed conversation about electric vehicles. (He doesn’t want one but is afraid he’s going to have to buy an EV soon. But it’s alright, because he charges the fuel cost to the company.) Then when that new friend left, it happened that someone else came in both to the barber’s and into that conversation, where he was told at length that the guy didn’t want to buy an electric vehicle but was afraid he was going to have to soon, although it’s okay because he charges it to the company.)

Okay, maybe at times it was irritating.

But being forced to sit there with comparatively nothing to do and definitely not enough time in which to do it, it seemed a bit unusually profound for a Saturday morning. I think I learned that there is a benefit to being still. I think I learned not to look in mirrors just after you’ve eaten.

I definitely learnt to go to the barber midweek.